SAMBA problems with Windows

[banderas20]

Hello guys,

I have just installed SAMBA in a Debian box. The only thing I have done has been edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and changed the workgroup so that it matched witch my Windows box.

Then I restarted the smbd service and tried to browse "Other locations" with the gnome File Explorer. It doesn't even show the windows machine.

¿What's wrong?

Thanks!

 

[atanere]

¿What's wrong?

Hi @banderas20, and welcome! We haven't seen a SAMBA question in quite awhile, and I know I have forgotten a lot since I last had anything to do with this subject. I don't use SAMBA myself, but I find that Google has many websites that describe setting up this file sharing process. Here is a very simple description that is a good review (even though it includes Mac OS, which you don't need).

But as far as "what is wrong?".... many things can go wrong. As the link above notes, be sure you are using Windows Workgroup and not Windows HomeGroup. Linux will not work with HomeGroup which is the normal Windows file/print sharing method since Windows 7. Your WIndows machine has to be set up just for simple TCP/IP based networking which Linux and SAMBA understands.

Besides just enabling SAMBA, you have to set up (on both Windows and Linux) what files/folders you want to share. You may need to create a separate SAMBA password to make the sharing connection work.

With your Gnome File Explorer, you might need "Browse Network" or "Connect to server" to see your Windows machine. I'm not using Gnome so I'm not sure of their File Explorer options offhand.

If you tell us which Debian version and which version of Windows you are using, I would try to duplicate your setup to note the steps involved. But this will be time consuming and I have to return to work tomorrow (and I work 12-hr shifts which leaves little free time).

One last question: Is SAMBA really what you want? Or do you just want the means to share files? And do you want to share files just within your home network, or also across an Internet connection? I use an app called TeamViewer that is primarily a remote desktop program, but it will also do file transfers easily. It is free for personal use and has both Linux and WIndows versions that you can install if you want to go this method instead. But this may not be what you want... it usually requires a user to accept the connection and that a 4-digit password be provided. This is more secure, but I think there is a way to set it up to accept connections all the time (like if you wanted to connect to home computer from work or from vacation). Personally, I don't want to leave a computer on that will accept connections from the Internet, so this may or may not be an option for you.

Any way you want to go, we will try to help you along. Others may join in who are better skilled with SAMBA too.

Cheers

 

[banderas20]

One last question: Is SAMBA really what you want? Or do you just want the means to share files? And do you want to share files just within your home network, or also across an Internet connection?

First of all, thank you for your time. I use TeamViewer and I know the benefits of it. What I'm trying to do is an scenario where Windows and Linux can coexist, for training purposes (since many companies use that kind of hybrid networks). I want to make as easy as possible.

I'm using Win7 Ultimate x64 and Debian9.

Don't worry. I'll try more things and I'm sure I'll come across it.

Thank you very much!

 

[atanere]

Well, I don't know if SAMBA will make file sharing "as easy as possible" or not!

I think for home networking or small offices, it may be an okay solution. But since all computers need to be configured, both Windows and Linux, I don't think that would scale well into larger businesses. Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a dedicated SFTP server might be better, and maybe there are even better options... I'm not really a server guru myself.

Here is a pretty good link that details setting up a Debian 9 server share. I didn't test it, but it might give you a good comparison to make sure that you covered all of these steps.

I think making Windows shares available is the more complicated setup, and you may need to research a few websites for better instructions, but this is a fairly good starting point. (This is from the same site as my link above, so you may have also found it already.)

In this YouTube video the author fails with SAMBA and describes another trick method (like TeamViewer) called NitroShare (available here). This app is in the Debian/Ubuntu/Mint repositories so it should be fairly straightforward to install. I've never used it but it looks promising, unless you want to avoid it for the same reason as TeamViewer.

Cheers

 

[banderas20]

Hello @atanere

I have been able to see Linux shares from my Windows machine. Now I will try the other way around.
You're right. NAS probably is simpler, but I'm practising with LInux and I want to achieve it without external hardware.

I had already looked at this link, but I don't like the idea of having to use SAMBA in one direction and CIFS in another.

Thank you for the links provided and for "NitroShare". I'll take a look at everything.

Best regards!!!

 

[atanere]

Great, you've got half the battle won already! If you run into trouble, try to give us some details and we will try to help you figure it out. I've seem some instructions that would have you disable the Windows firewall to make this next part work... but that's a bad idea.

Hope to hear your success story soon!

Cheers

 

[banderas20]

Great, you've got half the battle won already! If you run into trouble, try to give us some details and we will try to help you figure it out. I've seem some instructions that would have you disable the Windows firewall to make this next part work... but that's a bad idea.

Hope to hear your success story soon!

Cheers

Hello.

I have been able to do it both ways. In the way Linux -> Windows I tried with smbmount, as several webs explain. However, I don't have that command neither can download it via the repositories.

The I tried with mount -t smbfs, but it didn't recognize the filetype.

If I issued apt-get install smbfs, the result was:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package smbfs is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  cifs-utils

I wanted to do it via samba packages, but it gave me no choice. Once I installed cifs-utils, the proper command worked like this:

mount -t cifs //windows_host/folder /mount/point/ -o username=uname,uid=uname,gid=uname

Thanks for your help! And I hope this solution helps other people with similar issues.

Many thanks for your time!

 

[atanere]

Okay, glad you've got it all solved now. A little Googling last night showed that smbmount has been deprecated in favor of the cifs method you discovered. I haven't setup SAMBA in a long while and I wasn't aware of that.

Cheers